Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Accusation comes as security services warn of an escalation in violent discourse in the country
Benjamin Netanyahu has said a newly formed Israeli coalition that is poised to unseat him as prime minister was the result of “the greatest election fraud” in the history of democracy.
The sweeping accusation, similar in tone to those made about the US election by his former close ally Donald Trump, came as Israeli security services warned of an escalation in violent discourse in the country.
Relief in the occupied territories is mixed with sense that ‘nothing will change’
“It is the end of Netanyahu’s dark era,” says Kareem Hassanian, 44, a Palestinian psychologist who lives in the Gaza Strip, a place still counting the cost of the latest devastating war between Israel and Hamas.
He adds quickly: “And it’s the beginning of a new dark era. The new coalition won’t be different from the previous one. Israel still occupies Palestine. We will not see the end of the occupation in the coming years.”
Israel’s longest-serving leader begins fight to remain in power as opposition parties rush to establish government
Benjamin Netanyahu has fought back against what he slammed as a “dangerous” coalition of opposition parties that were rushing to establish a government aimed at unseating the country’s longest-serving leader.
A day after the opposition head, Yair Lapid, announced that he and Naftali Bennett – his far-right partner and prime minister in waiting – could form a “government of change”, the race was on to get it voted on in parliament and sworn in.
Under terms of Yair Lapid’s proposed deal, far-right politician Naftali Bennett would replace Benjamin Netanyahu as PM
The Israeli opposition leader has told the country’s president that he can form a government, a critical step that places Benjamin Netanyahu in his most precarious political position for more than a decade.
After days of frenetic negotiations, Yair Lapid told President Reuven Rivlin less than an hour before a midnight deadline that he had the support of a majority of opposition parties for what has been called a “government of change” – a mix of bitter ideological rivals united by a shared desire to oust Israel’s longest-serving leader.
Yair Lapid’s 28-day mandate to forge majority and end Netanyahu’s time as PM ends on Wednesday
Israeli opposition politicians have until midnight on Wednesday to hash out final negotiations to build a coalition government that would end Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year run as prime minister.
Under the country’s election laws, opposition leader Yair Lapid’s 28-day mandate to forge a majority by allying with rival parties ends on Wednesday. By this time, he should have informed the president he has succeeded.
More than 50 former foreign ministers, prime ministers and senior international officials, including two British Conservative former ministers, have signed an open letter condemning political interference in efforts by the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate alleged war crimes in Palestine.
The letter follows moves by the Trump administration to sanction court officials – orders that have since been reversed by the Biden administration – and is also seen as a rebuke of Boris Johnson, the British prime minister.
Yair Lapid says Naftali Bennett would serve first in proposed post-Netanyahu power-sharing deal
The far-right Israeli politician Naftali Bennett will be the country’s next prime minister under a proposed power-sharing deal intended to oust Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of the opposition has confirmed.
Yair Lapid said in a speech on Monday that his efforts to forge a coalition of ideologically opposed parties could lead to a new government within days, and with it, Netanyahu’s removal from office after 12 years in power.
The rightwing Israeli politician Naftali Bennett and opposition leader Yair Lapid have agreed to forge a coalition government that would oust the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after 12 years in power.
In a televised address, Bennett announced his intention to form 'a national unity government' alongside Lapid. Minutes after the speech ended, Netanyahu went on air to rail against Bennett
Far-right politician Naftali Bennett says he has agreed to a deal with Yair Lapid to forge a coalition government
The far-right Israeli politician Naftali Bennett and opposition leader Yair Lapid have agreed to forge a coalition government that would oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from his 12 straight years in power.
“It’s my intention to do my utmost in order to form a national unity government along with my friend Yair Lapid, so that, God willing, together we can save the country from a tailspin and return Israel to its course,” said Bennett, a former settler leader and religious nationalist, in a televised address.
Obaida Jawabra was weeks from turning 18 when he was shot by an Israeli soldier, after a life shaped by arrests and imprisonment
Route 60, the north-south artery that carves its way through the West Bank, is both the lifeblood of the region and a source of daily fear.
Flanked in parts by 2.5-metre-high (8ft) separation barriers, military checkpoints and watchtowers crewed by Israeli snipers, the 146-mile highway that starts and finishes in Israel but passes Hebron and Bethlehem in the West Bank, has been the scene of many fatal attacks and violent clashes.
Eitan Biran, whose parents, younger brother and great-grandparents were killed in the crash, has woken up and spoken to his aunt
The five-year-old boy who survived last weekend’s deadly cable car crash in the Italian mountains that killed his parents and sibling is awake and will soon be moved out of intensive care, hospital officials said on Thursday.
Eitan Biran has been in critical condition since the cabin plunged to the ground on the Mottarone mountain, killing the other 14 people inside, including his parents, younger brother and great-grandparents. Thirteen of the passengers died at the scene, while Eitan and another child were taken to hospital. The other child later died.
UN chief says Israel attacks on Gaza could constitute war crimes and accuses Hamas of firing indiscriminate rockets
The UN’s main human rights body is to meet to discuss launching an investigation into “systematic discrimination and repression” in Israel and Palestine, with the aim of identifying what it said were the root causes of recent Gaza bloodshed.
A draft proposal that calls for unprecedented levels of scrutiny of alleged abuses, called at the request of Muslim states, will be put before the 47-member UN human rights council on Thursday.
Alleged sedition and a royal family feud may have been driven by a broader plan to reshape the Middle East
The phone call that shook the Jordanian government came in the second week of March this year. On the line to the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) in Amman was the US Embassy, seeking an urgent meeting about a matter of national importance. The kingdom’s spies were startled. Danger was brewing on the home front, they were told, and could soon pose a threat to the throne.
Within hours, the GID had turned its full array of resources towards one of the country’s most senior royals, Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, a former crown prince and half-brother of the king, whom the Americans suspected was sowing dissent and had begun rallying supporters. By early April, officials had placed Hamzah under house arrest and publicly accused the former heir and two close aides of plotting to unseat King Abdullah.
Secretary of state Antony Blinken also announces aid to help rebuild Gaza as he begins Middle East trip
The US will reopen a mission in Jerusalem to manage diplomatic relations with Palestinians, which had been downgraded by the Trump administration, the US secretary of state has said.
On a trip to the Middle East designed to shore up last week’s ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, Antony Blinken also announced the Biden administration would ask Congress for $75m (£53m) in aid for Palestinians, including $5.5m in immediate aid for rebuilding Gaza. He had earlier pledged at a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the US would not allow Hamas to benefit from those funds.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced that the US would reopen its consulate in Jerusalem after it was downgraded by the Trump administration, and will provide an additional $75m to help rebuild Gaza. Speaking alongside the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, he also promised to ‘continue to rebuild’ the US’s relationship with Palestinians, and repeated comments from Biden that both Israelis and Palestinians should ‘enjoy equal measures of freedom, opportunity, and democracy, to be treated with dignity’
The US secretary of state has arrived in Jerusalem at the start of a Middle East tour aimed at shoring up the Gaza ceasefire. In a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Antony Blinken said the US 'fully supports Israel's right to defend itself against attacks' such as those by Hamas. A ceasefire was called after 11 days of fighting in which 250 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and 12 people died when Hamas rockets struck Israel.
Netanyahu spoke positively of his relationship with the US as well as a common ideal of recognising Israel as a Jewish state.
With the Tokyo Olympics just weeks away, the US State Department has issued a “Level 4” warning against traveling to Japan, that’s now struggling through another surge in Covid cases.
A new wrinkle two months before Olympics. US State Department advises travelers not to visit Japan. https://t.co/Hrnfkwzayz
A Tokyo medical organization has joined calls to cancel Japan’s Olympic games this summer, citing a surge in #COVID19 cases in the country.
“Japan will bear the maximum responsibility” for deaths caused by the games, it said.
The Trump Administration, which forced families to separate at the border, also made migrant parents leave without their children according to a new Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report.
The agency watchdog found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) knowingly deported parents who had asked to be allowed to take their children back, the Associated Press reports.
That contradicted assertions by senior DHS officials that parents were choosing to leave their children in the U.S. to stay with family or for other reasons while they were deported in 2017 and 2018 as the administration sought to enforce a hard-line approach to immigration enforcement.
The findings, issued by Trump-appointed Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, provide new insight into a policy that became a significant political crisis for the previous administration and a continuing challenge for the current one, which is working to reunite children who remain separated even now.
Incident comes with city still on edge after 11 days of war, and as Israeli opposition parties restart efforts to oust Benjamin Netanyahu
Israeli police have shot dead an attacker who stabbed an Israeli soldier and civilian in Jerusalem. The attack on Monday came with the city still on edge after 11 days of war, and as opposition parties restarted efforts to oust the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with a unity coalition.
It was the latest reminder of how volatile the situation is, barely two weeks after protests and clashes with police escalated into an exchange of rockets and missiles that killed more than 250 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians living in Gaza.
US secretary of state also reaffirms Biden administration supports a two-state solution
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has pledged the Biden administration will deal with “the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza” and will seek “equal measures of security” for Israelis and Palestinians as a ceasefire after 11 days of conflict held throughout the weekend.
More than 240 people in Gaza, including at least 66 children, and a dozen in Israel were killed during the violence, marking the first major diplomatic crisis for the Biden administration.